


4 times Sledge rightfully worried about Snafu, and 1 time he did it anyway

by rathernotmyname



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, 4+1 story, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bill doesn't take your shit, Burgie knows too, Canon-typical language, Insufferable!Snafu, Jay Knows, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, Prompt: hidden moments, Protective!Sledge, Romantic Fluff, Sledgefu Week 2019, hurt!Snafu, mention of PTSD, oh yeah forgot something:, rated T for one (1) graphic depiction of blood (and for some puke), some additional unnamed soldiers, very fucking worried!Sledge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-26 14:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18719155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathernotmyname/pseuds/rathernotmyname
Summary: If there was anything Eugene Sledge learned quickly in his time with the US Marines, it was that nobody was invulnerable, no matter how they acted.Snafu seems to make it his hobby to really drive that point home.Written for this year's Sledgefu Week (Prompt: "Hidden Moments")





	4 times Sledge rightfully worried about Snafu, and 1 time he did it anyway

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note:  
> I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING HOSTED OR REPOSTED ON ANY UNOFFICIAL APPS OR WEBSITES OTHER THAN _ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN_ WITHOUT MY APPROVAL, PARTICULARLY APPS WITH AD REVENUE AND SUBSCRIPTION SERVISES.

**I.**  
Mortars weigh a lot. Sledge learned that early on. And if he is honest with himself, his unit is not really your typical group of mortarmen.  


The tallest of them is 5’11”, and everyone else is either exactly 5’11” or miles below it.  
Sledge can speak for himself, with his 5’8” (just barely) and Leyden, who doesn’t even make it to 5’7”.  


Additionally, none of them is particularly wide or heavy.

So when it comes to carrying the mortars, they make somewhat of a funny procession.

Sledge stares at Snafu, who is carrying their shared mortar, and it _really_ looks hilarious. Snafu is just that skinny that Sledge could bet that the damn mortar weighs more than him.

Snafu stopped smoking some half an hour ago, probably because his cigs have run out. Sledge thinks about being generous, but the nicotine is vital for his adrenaline balance, so he discards that thought and marches on.

He starts to daydream about iced tea and long, cold showers, when he notices that Snafu is increasingly leaning to one side of their dusty trail.

“Mortar gettin’ too heavy?”, he calls. When he gets a mud-crusted middle finger in response, he giggles.

Five minutes later it’s not so funny anymore. Snafu has stepped up from a little stumble to all-out swaying, and Sledge can see Burgie from the corner of his eye, staring just as worriedly at their comrade. 

“How you doing?” Burgie asks him as they watch Snafu teeter on.

“Think I’ll get blisters on my blisters’ blisters” Sledge grumbles and picks at his fingernails. Burgie grins.

“Get used to it.”  
“I am!”  
“So you say.”  


Sledge rolls his eyes and Burgie cackles.

And Snafu staggers and falls over.

Instantly, they are at his side, finally relieving him of the damn mortar while a replacement shyly calls for a corpsman. Burgie waves him off.

“Was just a matter of time” he murmurs, slamming the mortar on the ground, whirling up a cloud of dust in the progress.  


“Stubborn idiot.”

 They turn Snafu on his back. For a short moment, they are silent, then Burgie stands back up, claps the confused replacement on the shoulder and bellows for a corpsman.

 

Snafu’s face is as white as snow, his big eyes unfocused and his breathing quick and shallow.

 

“For fucks sake, Snaf” Sledge says, because he can’t think of anything else.

There is no water inside his canteen, and Snafu’s is just as empty. He considers asking the poor replacement who’s still gaping at them, but he is distracted in the next moment.

“Sledgehammer” Snafu squeaks suddenly and Sledge turns back around. He gives the replacement a look that makes him scamper away as fast as his clumsy legs can carry him, then he grabs Snafu’s arm and leans over him.

“What’s the matter?”  
“Everythin’s turnin’” Snafu moans and his face pales a few more shades. He looks almost ashen now.  
“You’re alright, Snaf” Sledge answers, even though panic rises inside his chest as he says it.  


Snafu just grunts in response, then he starts to wheeze for air.

 _Fuck_ , Sledge thinks. “Fuck” he says.

Burgie squats back down next to him and presses a hand to Snafu’s forehead. He huffs.  
“Dry as bone” the sergeant mutters, and Sledge quickly mirrors him when he takes his hand away.  


Indeed, there is no sign of sweat on Snafu’s hairline, and his skin is boiling hot.

“You still there, Snaf?” Burgie shakes their fallen comrade a little, and Snafu answers “Hmm?”  
“He’s gonna be okay, right?” Sledge can’t help but ask, while unconsciously stroking wayward curls that peek out from under Snafu’s helmet.  


“Hope so” Burgie responds.

Sledge buries his fingers a little deeper in Snafu’s hair.

Just as they conclude that it’s probably more comfortable if they take Snafu’s helmet off, a corpsman appears next to them.

“The hell you doin’? Put it back on!” he snarls and promptly leans over Snafu’s head. 

“What’s the matter with him?” Sledge croaks, now seriously worried.  
“Sunstroke” is the simple reply.  


“Not the first one. Normally we would send them to the next camp, but we’re not allowed to right now”, at this the corpsman sneers and wets a rag with precious water.  
“Told them they are good as useless in this state, but who cares, right?”  


Burgie and Sledge keep silent and let the angry medic rant.

“Would be easier if we had more water” he grumbles eventually and finishes wiping down Snafu’s face and pouring some stale juice down his throat.

“Can you two carry a gurney?” he asks them. They look at the lone mortar, then at the confused replacement who dared to sneak back at some point, and nod.

They end up carrying Shelton for the rest of the day. Shelton sinks into a circle of sleep, fever and delirious rambling, while Sledge, who has taken the end of the gurney to be able to look at Snafu, sinks into his own circle of “He’ll be alright”, “Jesus fuck” and “Oh God he’s gonna die”.

His worry is lifted when Snafu stands up the next day, still tired and wobbly but better.

“You worry like a mother hen” Snafu teases when he manages to pry his tongue from his palate, where it apparently got stuck the day before.

Sledge just rolls his eyes. He doesn’t let Snafu carry the mortar for the better part of a week.

 

Simply out of spite, of course.

 

 **II.**  
Water.  


Water, water, water.

Every stray thought Sledge manages to form comes back to water, may it be his mother’s tulips in her grandmother’s vase, Deacon’s dog food or Sid’s ridiculous mass of hair products he got as gifts to his thirteenth birthday, everything ends in an image of clear, cool water, so vital and yet taken for granted.

A mistake he will never make again, if he doesn’t die of dehydration first.

 

In front of him, Snafu is again carrying the mortar.  
When Sledge tried to take it, Snafu had looked at his weary face and dry, cracked lips once, scoffed and nudged Sledge to the side, taking the stupid thing on his own shoulders.  


Before he can sink into a new desperate fantasy of drinking out of vases, Japs burst out of the surrounding undergrowth and they have to run.

Sledge’s throat immediately feels like it’s going to combust spontaneously, and he pants helplessly and shoots at anything that moves and doesn’t look like one of his brothers in arms.

There is no time to set up the mortars, but that doesn’t mean that the carriers can just chuck them in a ditch and run off without them; mortars are expensive and precious goods, which means that the few lucky men are supposed to shoot at Japs _while_ hauling the mortars around.

The fight drags on for almost four hours, until it’s so hot that any sweat Sledge can shed immediately evaporates and the Japs seem to not feel like fighting anymore. As quickly as they came they are gone again, leaving a sea of bodies and burnt grass behind.

Sledge finds Burgie and Snafu in a matter of minutes. Together they share their last water and listen to the shouts for corpsmen and sand to extinguish the small fires that have broken out, and then they are marching again.

Bill Leyden comes and takes the mortar away from Snafu.

Sledge is relieved.

Snafu is indifferent, but Sledge thinks that secretly he is just as relieved to be rid of it.

Leyden is not happy. But their gunny has the eyes of a hawk, so he says nothing for a change.

 

Water. Water, water, “Water!”

What?

“Fuckin’ finally” Snafu sighs next to him and moves so quickly to the new found well that Sledge feels a little dizzy.

Snafu is the first to dunk his canteen into the somewhat muddy water, and the first to empty and refill it again.  
“You’re gonna drown if you keep that up” Sledge hears Ack Ack mumble fondly, but nobody stops him or the other soldiers from right-out sticking their heads into the well.  


More and more men get the message and scramble for the water, and Sledge gets pushed to the back.

Annoyed, he uses elbows and light shoves to make his way to the front, just in time to see Snafu shake water out of his hair and walk away to smoke or piss or whatever he does when he’s alone.

The water tastes vile, but that was to be suspected.

If Sledge is honest, drinking out of a flower vase probably tastes just as bad.

And then De L’Eau, stupid innocent De L’Eau, dunks his helmet in and coincidentally pulls a severed human arm to the surface.

Sledge can’t say what makes him sick the most; being forced to vomit the poisoned water up again, the arm itself or poor Jay’s horrified shrieks.

The aftermath is even worse. The cacophony of gagging and exhausted crying grates on Sledge’s nerves, and he tries to keep himself in check to not hit De L’Eau for finding that damn arm. He kicks a stone, shouts in pain as his toes twinge in protest and lays down for a nap.

When the sound of groaning wakes him he realizes that Snafu doesn’t know about the arm.

This time, Bill Leyden is faster than Sledge.

“What, you didn’t hear Jay squealing?” Sledge hears him say when he jogs up to them.

Snafu lies on the ground, curled into a tiny ball, both hands pressed to his abdomen.

“Naw, Leyden” he drawls, squinting up at him.  
“Went for a piss, didn’t hear shit ‘bout the fuckin’ water.”  


“You have to puke it up” Sledge tells him, ice cold worry rising without his consent.

“Like hell” Snafu growls and curls a little tighter.

Sledge sits down next to him. He doesn’t know what to do. Force Snafu to vomit? Threaten him? None of that will work without Snafu wanting it to work, though, so he dismisses it.  
…Should he report him?  


Bill seems to have no such insecurities, and Sledge envies him for it.

“What now, huh? You just gonna lie around n’ suffer, shit n’ ass?”

Snafu opens his mouth.

“Don’t you dare puke on my boots.”

“Did all the work yourself, is what I see, ballpeen” Snafu chortles.  
“There’s puke all over ‘em already.”  


Bill looks down at his shoes (which are so dirty that Sledge can’t really make out what’s new and what’s old) and scoffs.

Snafu keeps on giggling and Sledge almost calms a little, at least until he abruptly stops and moans in agony, clutching his stomach.

“Jesus Christ, Snafu”, is all Sledge says, because how is he supposed to help him? Or should he help him at all? Would Snafu help him?

 _Yes, yes, he would_ , but that doesn’t help Sledge in making up his mind on _how_.

Bill helps him out once again.

“I’m gonna get a corpsman. Gene, you stay” he declares, and before they can protest, he is off.

“Fuck” Snafu mutters.

“Um, yeah… How you feeling?” Sledge asks him and immediately wants to bite his own tongue clean off.

“ _Testy_.”  
Snafu gifts him with an irritated stare.  


Well. If he’s helping Snafu by not doing anything, then he will do his best to do nothing. Which also means that he has to worry himself sick and listen to Snafu whimper in pain while waiting for Bill and the corpsman, but that’s alright, too.

“Fuuuuuck” Snafu moans.

He has rolled onto his back, his arms holding his abdomen like a vice. He alternates between pulling his legs up so his feet are near the back of his thighs and stretching them out, desperately trying to find a position that brings relief.

When the weird twitches start, Sledge is again on his haunches right next to him, shaking his shoulders slightly.

“Stop that.” he demands. “Why are you doing that?”

Snafu grinds his teeth. “Cramps” he hisses, and Sledge lays a hand on one of Snafu’s arms, unsure of what to do.

Why isn’t Bill coming back? He might just have to get a corpsman himself.  
He sees why a split second later. Everyone’s gearing up again; they are about to march on.  


Sledge definitely doesn’t panic.

And he definitely doesn’t temporarily lose his balance and accidentally presses his hand down heavily on Snafu’s arm that is still wrapped around his stomach.

 

The howl that Snafu gives will permanently become an element of Sledge’s nightmares.

 

Sledge’s frantic tries to make Snafu stop wailing in pain are interrupted by Bill finally arriving with the corpsman. Said medic pushes Sledge to the side and gives Snafu a hearty slap, which results in a flood of loud cursing but at least makes him stop making those awful noises.

“You need to hurl?” the corpsman asks Snafu after a moment.

Snafu seems to consider that for an instant, and then he replies in the affirmative. The medic swiftly turns him on his side and holds him up while Snafu expels his stomach contents.

Sledge swallows thickly. He watches Snafu vomit and secretly crosses his fingers that the damn water didn’t cause Snafu to become infested with a tapeworm or something, and then he proceeds to feel bad because he hurt Snafu, as unintentional as it may have been.

Obviously, the medic can’t cut Snafu open and have a look at potential tapeworms, so he lets him puke for a while longer, gives him some morphine and hopes for the best.

It isn’t quite the outcome Sledge hoped for, but Snafu can stand upright again, still massaging his abdomen from time to time but generally feeling better (at least until the morphine wears off).

When he tries to apologize, Snafu just rolls his eyes and jabs his ribs slightly, thus Sledge settles for watching Snafu’s intake of anything from now on, be it water or the air they breathe.

 

At the same time he asks himself why he bothers to such an extent.

 

 **III.**  
Okinawa is a wet hellhole. If someone had told him that he would think of hell as anything other than the picture he was taught in countless hours in church a year or two before, he would have had a hard time believing them.  


But now that he almost misses the hellish heat of Peleliu and slowly drowns in mud, rain and other disgusting things that he doesn’t particularly want to think about, he wishes he could say that he would have believed it.

If he had foreseen that his image of his faith would change so dramatically, perhaps he would have never enlisted.

In any other situation, such thoughts would (and _should_ ) hold him awake at night, but the pure exhaustion of wading through mud and guts the whole day and digging holes in ever moving ground plus the endless rain makes that as good as impossible.

Sledge takes Ack Ack’s advice to heart.

It’s nice to think that he still watches over them through his wisdom and advice, as dramatical as it sounds.

The rain is as good a white noise as any.  
He sleeps.  
And then it’s his watch and he is moody.  


 

Snafu won’t stop _talking_.

 

He blabbers on and on about the shitty weather; “Not even N’awleans in winter is as bad as this shit, Sledgehammer”, about his can of peaches in which he found mildew the other day, about the paper plane his older brother threw at an alligator once, even about his shoe tie which apparently ripped again, that sonovabitch.

He talks and talks and talks and Sledge takes it in strike. At least for a while.

When Snafu tries to tell him about the one time he wore a skirt to go to some event hosted by girl scouts, he snaps.

“Shut the hell up, Snaf. Goddamn go to sleep and let me mope in peace, f’ Christ’s sake.”  
“What, ya don’t wanna hear where I got that skirt from? Thing is, the girl who owned it wanted ta have it back, and – “  
“I really don’t.”  


Snafu scrunches up his nose.

“Pity that”, he huffs.  
“Should learn to appreciate advice from them who know more ‘n you. Else you never gonna get a girl, Sledgehammer.”  


With that, he slips down into the mud and curls up, only his curls peeking out of his poncho.

Sledge scrubs a hand down his face and embraces the silence.

A new sound joins the never-ending rain, a soft pitter-patter of fingers on a wet poncho. Sledge has noticed it before, but until now he thought it was a new sleeping habit of Snafu’s, along with the teeth grinding.

He quickly discovers that Snafu only does this when he is still awake.

He also discovers that he can hear it throughout his entire watch, until it’s Snafu’s turn or it’s time to go on.

After a few nights of endless finger-tapping aka sleepless nights on part of Snafu he can’t stand it anymore.

“Snaf” he says when he recognizes the beat of “Sur le pond d’Avignon” (he’d heard it sung by a Frenchmen at some festivity once) in finger-tap.

_Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap._

“What?” comes the terse reply.

“You’re not sleeping.”  
“ _Vraiment_?”  
“What?”  


_Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap._

“You sure? Maybe you fell asleep and you’re dreamin’ shit up, now.”  
“Fuck off. When did you sleep the last time?”  


A short bout of silence follows.

“I reckon tha’ was a rhetorical question?”  
“How do you even know that word?”  
“Oh, fuck you, Sledge.”  


Sledge almost forgets his entrance argument over his annoyance, but he grasps it by its hair and catapults it back at Snafu.

“You gonna die of exhaustion if you ain’t sleeping at all, Snafu. Don’t know if that’s your goal. Sounds better than bleeding to death, that’s for sure,” he adds as an afterthought.

Water splashes on Sledge’s helmet as Snafu whips his poncho around.

Sledge wonders for a moment how he didn’t drown in his makeshift one-man tent.

“I can’t” Snafu snaps and furiously wipes cold rain from his face.

“You can, you gotta be tired.”

Pale green meets light brown as Snafu leans in, so close that their helmets bump together. The delicate skin beneath his eyes is colored a violet-ish black, almost like bruises.

“Do I fuckin’ _look_ like ’m tired?”

Sledge can feel every breath Snafu takes, hot air blowing against his lips. Something stirs in his chest, but he neither recognizes nor acknowledges it.  
The only right answer is “Yes.”  


A grenade explodes somewhere behind them, and in the short burst of light Sledge sees that Snafu has closed his eyes, helmeted forehead resting on Sledge’s, and the bags under his eyes look like deep, deadly trenches.

Without really thinking about it he lifts a hand and traces his index finger over Snafu’s thin, darkly flushed eyelids.

“I’m-“ Snafu starts, voice cracking.  
“I’m so _fuckin’_ exhausted, Eugene.”  


Sledge swallows thickly and continues stroking Snafu’s poor abused eyes.

“But I can’t sleep. Just don’t work. So I gotta kill time, ya know?”

 The right eyelid beneath Sledge’s finger flutters. He drifts upwards, stroking Snafu’s brow and rubbing small circles into his scrunched-up forehead.

Sledge just makes a noncommittal sound, because he can’t think of anything to say. He just adds his other fingers of both hands and massages Snafu’s temples.

The tiny sighs he induces curiously satisfy him.

He is so caught up in this interesting observation he only notices that his counterpart has fallen asleep when the hot gusts of air against his lips start to warm them up.

“Snaf?” he whispers.

The man in question remains asleep, and this would make Sledge feel very accomplished if it weren’t for the fact that they are both still sitting up.

It turns out that laying Snafu back down without waking him is no problem at all, his body so desperate for rest that he sleeps like a stone.

Sledge is almost a little envious.

 

His right hand stays on Snafu’s forehead for the rest of the night.

 

 **IV.**  
Days come and go, and Eugene can’t help but notice the thing that’s slowly developing between him and Shelton, perhaps starting the day they met.  


He doesn’t really know what it is, and Shelton doesn’t seem to know either, so they ignore it for most of the time, and when it’s unignorable they don’t talk about it.

But Eugene’s nightly head massages and Snafu’s way of walking a little too close to Eugene to make sure he is never in harms way when they are on the street (or rather in a mud puddle) speaks clearer words than they both know how to pronounce, and they are not the only one’s to see that.  
Burgie has noticed, if not everyone else in their section, except for Jay maybe, Eugene thinks with a fond grin.  


 

They are so bored from wading through mud and shit for days that the full-blown firefight that breaks out in the next moment is almost a relief.

Someone who’s face Eugene can’t recognize in the gloomy light almost buries his mortar in the mud, and he helps him tugging it out again.  
Snafu is already cussing him out, and when the unknown soldier lifts his head to scream back Eugene recognized him as Kathy, their permanently assigned carrier when Burgie doesn’t look too closely; and Burgie looks less and less as Eugene and Snafu survive everything that’s thrown at them.  
Perhaps it’s biased behavior, but nobody gives a shit about that anymore.  


Their ammunition is scarce. Some of it sunk in some river a few hours ago, and the rest is instantly completely wet.  
They have a few misfires, one of them jumping out of the pipe and nearly exploding in their laps.  


“You got ammo?” one of the other mortar teams shouts out to them.

“We don’ got shit!” Snafu shrieks back, crouching down lower in a desperate attempt to better his aim. Eugene lifts a new load and waits impatiently.

“What?” the other guy screams.

“We got good as none!” Snafu answers again, his voice cracking from the incessant hollering.

“You hear us over there?” the other guy calls, and Snafu rolls his eyes. He nudges Kathy, who quickly takes over for him.

Eugene shoots a look at the helpless mortar team a few feet away from them. They are apparently completely out of ammo, turning this way and that, seeking for help that doesn’t come.  
But they need as much firepower as possible, and their gunny notices that, too.  


“Mortars!” Eugene hears him shout. “Quit fucking around!”

When the only reply he gets are shrugged shoulders and helpless faces, he turns to the other teams, demanding one of them to share ammo.  
Snafu, who has already risen, snags a few of their meager stock and sprints away.  


Eugene changes positions with Kathy, because the moron is more preoccupied with not shitting his pants to aim properly.

That’s the reason he doesn’t notice that Snafu hasn’t come back until their ammo is eventually empty as well. Kathy shouts for help, but the other teams just wave their hands; there is nothing left to share.  
They hide the precious mortars behind moldy tree trunks and lie down flat, rifles at the ready.  


Eugene looks to the direction that Snafu ran off to, and there he is, crouching next to Jay and the guy with the bad ears.

As he tries to give Snafu a grim smile a round of bullets go down right in front of his face and he scrambles back as fast as he can.  
He can faintly hear Snafu scream his name and then his forearms are gripped by somebody in front of him and he is violently shoved back, slipping on his knees.  


Eugene doesn’t have to wipe the mud from his eyes to know who keeps pushing him back. Snafu pants right into his face, but there’s still mud in between his eyelids, in his mouth, in his nose, mud, mud, mud everywhere and he can’t see, he can’t fucking _breathe_ –

“Gene,” Snafu croaks into his ear, and a hand that isn’t Eugene’s wipes frantically at his face, freeing him. Gasping, he stares blankly at his rescuer, and Snafu stares right back.

His mouth hangs open, almost as if he’s in awe about Gene or seeing something else entirely. Eugene yanks one of his arms free from Snafu’s grip, scrubs remaining dirt from his eyes and snorts water from his nose.

Snafu gives a wheezing breath, trailing off in a pained whine.

There’s too much mud and other shit clinging to his uniform to make anything out, say wounds or bruises, so Eugene rolls both of them behind some conveniently placed trunk and starts tearing at Snafu’s shirt.

He doesn’t wear an undershirt, so the furiously bleeding bullet wound in his side greets him as soon as he tugs it as far as Snafu’s navel.

“Fuck!” Eugene screams into the damp air.

Snafu gasps for breath and pats the hand that is still holding his shirt in a vice-like grip.  
Slowly, the ringing in Eugene’s ears fades to a dull roaring, the _whoosh whoosh_ of his own heartbeat only a staying reminder that he is, in fact, still alive. A deep breath is taken.  


Working himself into a panic attack will help neither him nor Snafu.

Which is when he remembers that they have a problem Snafu indeed needs help with.

“Snaf,” he shakes his comrade a little, rising him from his own stupor.  
“Snaf, is the bullet still in there?”  


Eugene has already had his own miserable experiences with bullets, one miserable incident had Burgie kneading his shoulder like bread dough to get the bullet out, and _that_ had already hurt like a bitch.

He doesn’t even want to imagine how it’ll hurt to have someone pushing and squeezing the mush that the damn missile has rendered your internal organs to.

“Still in,” Snafu replies with a shudder, “Still fuckin’ in.”

“What’s in?” a voice next to Eugene’s shoulder asks, and he jumps a few feet into the air.  
“Shit bejesus, ‘m sorry,” Jay squawks hastily, patting Eugene’s back. Then he takes a look at the half-dressed figure before them and whimpers in terror.  


“Jesus fucking hell,” he curses and immediately stands back up. “I’mma get –“

“No,” Snafu interrupts him, clutching at Eugene’s hand and at Jay’s leg.  
“Gonna get y’self killed” he groans, and Jay, not really sure what to do, sits back down.  


Eugene thinks it’s a little selfish, sitting in safety behind some tree while their brothers in arms fight for their life around them, but with Snafu possibly fighting for his own life right next to him he knows he would never choose differently.

Jay’s train of thought seems to have come to a similar conclusion, because he settles down properly and lifts Snafu’s legs onto his lap, leaving Eugene the honors of taking the upper half.  
Eugene does so without hesitation, but only after leaning around their hiding place and shouting for a corpsman, knowing that there are little of them to spare.  


Both his and Jay’s undershirts are shrugged off and respectively pressed against and wrapped around Snafu’s wound, and then Eugene presses his own hand against it to be sure and they wait.

“Fuckin’ _hell_ tha’ shi’ hur’s,” Snafu slurs after a while.

His eyelids flutter in random intervals, sometimes he suddenly slumps in Eugene’s arms and jerks up again as if waking up abruptly, while Jay and Eugene take turns peeking their heads from their hiding place and shouting for a medic.  
They sit around for a while until Eugene asks himself what exactly they are doing. And when he looks in Jay’s dirt-streaked face, which’s owner is clearly engaged in trying not to start wailing, he knows with sudden, horrified clarity what it is they’re doing.  


Speaking in terms of _really-fucked-up_ … it’s Snafu’s death watch.

Eugene begins to sob without much preamble. Jay joins him, and Snafu just looks on, understandingly confused.  
“Hey. Hey, Sledgehammer,” and if that beloved and often hated accent doesn’t break Eugene down, it’s what he says next.  
“What y’all weepin’ for? I ain’t dead yet… assholes.”  
“You’re gonna bleed out Snaf, that’s what.” _And then what am I supposed to do_ , Eugene thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it out loud.  


Jay clings to one of Snafu’s shoe-ties, sniffling and looking quite pathetic, but Eugene honestly can’t speak much better for himself.

“’Least I’ll look pretty when ’m dead,” Snafu mumbles, “No limbs or face missin’ an’ nothin’.”  
“Yeah, but you’ll be dead.”  
“Tha’ w’s the point, wasn’ it? Sure didn’ enlist f’ _surviving_. Now stop ya bawlin’. ‘Is embarrassing.”  
“Shut the fuck up.”  


Snafu shuts the fuck up.

Jay and Eugene stop their bawling and blame it on nerves.

Jay doesn’t say anything when Eugene takes Snafu’s hand in his and strokes his knuckles.  
Jay doesn’t say anything when Snafu buries his face in Eugene’s chest when the pain overwhelms him.  


He just looks at them, with eyes that are wiser than they should be for his age.

Together they wait, and in the following days in which Snafu is speeded to the next camp to care for his wound and back when it’s cared for (as best as possible within four days) Jay never says anything about the Thing.

Whatever it’s supposed to be.

But Jay just looks at them from then on, and Eugene knows that he knows, maybe even better than him and Snafu do.

 

Eugene has neither the energy nor the truthfulness to deny it.

 

 **+1**  
“’What do we do now?’ Whaddan idiot,” Snafu mutters.  


Burgie and Eugene keep the comfortable silence, only broken when Burgie draws Snafu’s attention to himself by saying “Snaf” and hands the bottle of liquor to him. When the bottle is passed on to Eugene, it’s almost empty.

If he’s being honest with himself, that’s a good thing, because God knows they are anything but alcohol resistant after such a long time without it.

Burgie seems to notice it as well when he stands up and ambles after the naïve private who asked that goddamned question.  
“Holy shit” the sergeant giggles and does his best to walk straight.  


Eugene and Snafu look at each other and grin. They watch carefully until Burgie has made it safely to the rest of the celebrating soldiers and Eugene decides against drinking and gives the bottle back to Snafu’s caring hands.

Barely a day has gone by without some kind of affectionate action between them, be it watching each other’s sleep or slinging their arms around each other to take some weigh of their aching feet, and while it hasn’t gone unnoticed since the day Eugene rescued Snafu on the airfield nobody, including them, has ever said a word about it.  
That has to change, Eugene realizes reluctantly, because the war is over. They are going home, and he needs to know what it means, if it means anything at all.  


“Snaf,” he begins cautiously, “I need to ask you something.”

Snafu squints down to him.  
“What you on about, Gene? Need a light?”  


_Yes_ , Eugene thinks, _you are my light and I need you_ , but that sounds so melodramatic that he shudders in disgust.  
Maybe his mother’s novels were stuck in his head more than he thought.  


Eugene opens his mouth to continue, almost losing his pipe in the process, but a few dead-drunk soldiers traipse by to find a nice place to piss and the next few words never leave his lips.

Instead he rolls his eyes heavenwards, jerking his head in the direction of a more seclusive boulders.  
Snafu grunts in agreement.  


“Can’t fuckin’ relax with all them wannabees around” he grumbles and stands on wobbly legs.

Striving to climb down from their retreat first (definitely not because of a misplaced competitive urge), Eugene starts to slip down his boulder, but even though Snafu is much higher up he is faster than him.

 

Meaning he tumbles down, head-first.

 

His trouser leg rips in his haste to reach Snafu.

“Don’t move,” he barks out as Snafu tries to sit up, “Don’t you move a fucking inch!”

Snafu flops back down, huffing in protest. Huffing trails off into snickering, turning in to full-blown laughter.

“Are you hurt? Shut up, this is not funny!” Eugene snarls at him, palpating his comrade’s scrawny, solid body for injuries.  
“Gene, fuck off, ‘m fine” Snafu snorts, pressing a hand to his chest to calm the laugh-induced spasms, presenting a darkening bruise on his ribs when his shirt rides up in the process.  


Eugene ignores him but save for the bruise he doesn’t find anything to worry about, except for the extent of Snafu’s drunkenness.

He sighs.

“One bottle of liquor does you in? That’s rather pathetic, ya know?”  
“Don’ blame me, Sledge, haven’t had anythin’ for least a few months.”  


Since Snafu seems content with staying where he is, Eugene sits down next to him, watching him watch the stars once more.

He has already forgotten the reason for leaving their original place of retreat when Snafu mentions it after a while.

“Yeah, about that…” he murmurs, undecided.  
“It’s just… what are we, Snaf? And don’t you say ‘What you mean’ because you know what I mean.”  


Snafu stays silent for a long, long time. For so long, in fact, that Eugene thinks he fell asleep, but when he turns his head to check Snafu’s eyes are wide open, face blank.

When he still hasn’t said anything after five more minutes, or maybe five more hours, Eugene can’t quite tell, Eugene gives up.

“Alright, I see how it is. Forget I said anything” he hisses, beginning to stand up.  
Before he is out of earshot, Snafu suddenly clears his throat and rasps:  


“You see the stars right ‘ere, Gene?”

Expecting another stupid joke, Eugene whips his head around to glare at him, stopping short at the sight that is presented to him.

Snafu is not pointing up, but pointing to his own wide, expressive eyes, not hidden below drooping lids for a change.  
Eugene indulges him without really knowing why. Harrumphing, he leans over Snafu’s face.  


Snafu’s eyes appear as two round, bottomless ponds, and if he squints he actually sees a few stars reflected in them. The sight reminds Eugene of a photograph of the Milky Way he saw in one of his books once. The tears glistening at the corners complete the picture.

It looks unbelievable beautiful.

Without noticing, Eugene leans in more and more, until he can only see his mirror image.

And when Snafu leans up and kisses him, he realizes that he doesn’t need an answer to his question anymore.

 

**_fin_ **

**Author's Note:**

> (This is actually a mean open ending, considering that "Hidden Moments" was a non-AU prompt, which means that the Train Scene™ will still happen. I'm sorry.)
> 
> Finally edited! Jesus, I finally figured out how to do  
> Stuff  
> like  
> this  
> instead of
> 
> like
> 
> this.
> 
> I seriously have to write < br \ > behind every paragraph? There's a reason why I like LaTeX more than HTML, gosh.  
> Sigh. Well, whatever, I like it much better now, and all typos I could find are edited out now, too.
> 
> This is my very first fic, so tell me what you think!  
> Crossposted on tumblr: **@rathernotmyname**  
>  Thanks to Getmean and Lilliputianmerriell for this years Sledgefu Week!


End file.
